Latin America: The Helpless Hostages

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The note relayed to the West German ambassador's residence in Guatemala City had been scribbled hastily by the ambassador himself. "Do not be afraid," wrote Count Karl von Spreti, 62, to his son Alessandro, 11. "My health is good, my heart is as stout as the Bühler Höhe [a well-known hill in Bavaria's Black Forest]. I am treated with respect and courtesy. I embrace you fondly. Papi." Last week, shortly after he wrote that note, the ambassador was murdered with a bullet behind the right ear.

Von Spreti was on his way to his residence when eight young members of the Rebel Armed Forces, a revolutionary group, forced him out of his Mercedes 300 at gunpoint. The Guatemalan government rejected a rebel demand for the release of 22 Guatemalan political prisoners and $700,000 in exchange for the ambassador. The government refused to negotiate even after Bonn offered to pay the money. Five days after the kidnaping, Von Spreti was found dead, lying face down on the mud floor of an abandoned hut outside Guatemala City.

Von Spreti's cold-blooded murder sent a chill through the diplomatic corps in Latin America—and elsewhere. Since the beginning of 1970, eight such kidnapings or attempts have occurred in Latin America. All the victims but Von Spreti were freed, most after as many as 20 political prisoners had been released. But nobody is likely to forget Von Spreti's fate—or how U.S. Ambassador John Gordon Mein was gunned down on a Guatemala City street nearly two years ago as he tried to escape an ambush. Indeed, even as Guatemalans were searching for Von Spreti, U.S. Consul Curtis C. Cutter barely escaped from a similar bushwhacking in Porto Alegre, Brazil. When four masked men blocked his station wagon with a Volkswagen, Cutter gunned the motor and rammed his way out of the ambush. The would-be kidnapers raked Cutter's wagon with machine-gun fire, but his only injury was a bullet in the right shoulder.

Painful Questions. The death of Von Spreti raised painful questions. Why had the Guatemalan government refused to negotiate his release? It had done so for Foreign Minister Alberto Fuentes Mohr and U.S. Labor Attache Sean M. Holly. The Von Spreti case was unfortunately complicated by Guatemala's domestic politics. A strong law-and-order current is running in the country; it swept hard-nosed Colonel Carlos Arana Osorio into the presidency last month and he vigorously opposes further concessions to kidnapers.

Many Latin Americans suggested bitterly, however, that the government's uncompromising stand was influenced by the fact that Von Spreti was not North American. One previously exchanged revolutionary last week asked TIME Correspondent Bernard Diederich in Mexico City: "Do you think the Guatemalan government would have dared to refuse the deal if it had been a Yankee ambassador?"

More than a few West Germans agreed. Acting on Bonn's request for help, Washington had the CIA contact the guerrillas, to no avail. Still, there was a feeling that more pressure should have been used by the one country in a position to use it. "Only two forces could have saved Spreti," said a West German official. "The Guatemala government didn't want to and the American government was not inclined to."